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Unitarians, legislative districting, and fairness

I gave a talk about gerrymandering at the Prairie Unitarian Universalist society. As usual, I showed how you can pretty easily district a state with a 60-40 partisan split to give the popular majority party 60% of the seats, 40% of the seats, or 100% of the seats. After I do that, I ask the audience which map they consider the most fair and which they consider the least fair. Usually, people rate the proportional representation map the fairest, and the map where the popular minority controls the legislature the least fair.

But not this time! The Unitarians, almost to a one, thought the districting where the popular majority controlled all the seats was the least fair. I take from this that the Unitarian ethos rates “the minority rules over the majority” as a lesser evil than “the minority is given no voice at all.”